I read an interesting blog post today from Senior writer at Fortune magazine Adam Lashinsky’s Go West Blog. His post, titled “Will Twitter Make It?” gave me a lot of food for thought. Adam is addressing the question many of us are curious about when it comes to Twitter’s business model. Adam is also asking the question why should he and other business people use Twitter.

I myself have had a Twitter account for almost a year now but never used it because I, like Adam couldn’t see why business people would frequent this micro blogging service. I also had to fight the misconception that Twitter was only for those with SMS mobile devices. I fought the urge to Tweet long and hard until my good friend and Social CRM Expert Brent Leary told me how blogs like Mahalo drove major traffic to their website using Twitter.

Driving traffic to my website and blog was something I was definitely interested in doing. I then renewed my Twitter account and have been Tweeting both from my computer using the Twitter application, TweetDeck and with my cell phone using Jott, the voice recognition service. Marketing my business, my blog and myself through Twitter, or “Twarketing” has now been added as a focal point to my current business strategy.

I now have my Tweets show up on my blog using Twitter Tools. I automatically respond to followers and schedule future Tweets with Tweetlater. I even track the links in my Tweets using Tweetburner. Last but not least I do market research on products and services using Summize, which was just purchased recently by Twitter.

I believe that Twarketing will eventually drive those of the more mainstream to become users of Twitter. Early adopters like Maggie Mason who was the 448th person to sign up for Twitter, according to Twitterholic, are already seeing the fruits of their labors. Maggie currently has 6,458 follows and has parlayed those followers into traffic to her MightyGoods blog. Mighty Goods is a shopping blog and one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Cool Sites of the year.

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama holds the number two position on Twitterholic with 56,183 followers. The Blog Barack20 credits Twitter as one of the many social media networks that helped Mr. Obama win the Democratic nomination for President.

I believe Twitter will make it. I believe Twitter will develop a profitable business model. I also believe I have an idea of how Twitter can use a current advertising model for one of their revenue streams.

I will look to share that in a future post.

Brent Leary, I think you may have created a Twonster..;-)

All the best

JB

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I have only been using the micro blogging tool Twitter for just under a month and I have to say I am hooked. My first Tweet or Twit was on a myspace page that someone emailed me of a lady who makes dresses out of Barack Obama T-shirts, and my latest Tweet was about my testing out a new broadcast email service called Mad Mimi. I can send Twitter updates directly from the Twitter website or from my cell phone using SMS. I can even send them via voice activation using a service called Jott that will take my spoken word and translate it into text on the Twitter network.

Some of you Solopreneurs and Small Business Owners are probably asking yourself why in the world would I need to get a Twitter account and start Tweeting. I said the same thing over a month ago but a funny thing happened when I sent out my first Tweet. I got an answer back in a Follower. A follower is someone who sees what you just put out on the Twitter network, then looks at your profile and then at a push of a button follows all your twitter update from now until they want to no more.

I know it may sound like a religious experience or maybe even cyber stalking and NO it is not. It is more like a voluntary way of telling you that I like what you wrote about and thereafter checking your profile out, I don’t mind getting more information from you.

If you goto a website called Twitterholic.com you can find out who the top 100 people being followed on the Twitter network. Barack Obama is number three on this list. Not only do I follow him but in return he follows me. How thrilling was it to see that the current Democratic Presidential Candidate is following little ole me.

So how can you use this to your advantage as a Solopreneur or Small Business Owner? Very simple. Think of it as Micro Marketing 140 characters at a time. 140 characters is all that you are allowed to post at a time on Twitter so your messages need to be short and to the point. Use it as a way to make timely announcements of your new services or product launches. Invite your many followers to your next event or just share a great website that would help someone in their time of need.

What you should not do is abuse the Twitter network of followers by sending them Twitter spam. Twitter spam is just like email spam unwanted information that serves no purpose. If you do this you will lose followers in a heartbeat. The best thing to do is just be yourself and share topics of discussion your audience of followers would appreciate.

I will do a follow up post on the many Twitter Tools for Solopreneurs and Small Businesses. In the mean time please get your own Twitter account and start sharing. If you share good information you will get a great following.

All the best

JB
twitter.com/jbrath

Had to add this great Youtube video on how Twitter works enjoy.

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